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Posthumous Honor for Alkhas

On the eve of the anniversary of his death, a website for Hannibal Alkhas, the celebrated Assyrian-Iranian artist, is to be unveiled September 13, in Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.

A number of Alkhas’s artworks from the museum treasury will be displayed. A film on the life and works of the artist is also to be screened, MNA reported.

Two speeches are scheduled to be delivered on the occasion by Majid Molla-Norouzi, director general of Visual Arts Department at the ministry of culture and Islamic guidance, and Aydin Aghdashlou, famous Iranian painter and graphic designer.

Yonaten Betkolia, secretary-general of Assyrian Universal Alliance and parliamentarian will attend the ceremony as well.

The event has been organized by a committee including representatives of Iranian Painters Association, Assyrian Society, Cultural Heritage Organization, Iranian Artists Forum, and Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.

The commemoration of the late artist is due next year.

Biography

Hannibal Alkhas (1930 – 2010) was a sculptor, painter and author. He was born in 1930 in Iran into an ethnic Assyrian and Christian family and spent his childhood and teenage years in Kermanshah, Ahwaz and Tehran. In 1951, Alkhas moved to the United States in pursuit of his education and studied philosophy for three years at Loyola University of Chicago, Illinois.

From 1953 to 1958 he attended the Art Institute of Chicago where he earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Fine Arts.

In 1959, after the death of his father, the famous Assyrian writer Rabi-Adai Alkhas, he returned to Iran and began to teach painting, drawing, and art history at the Tehran School of Fine Arts. During this time he established the Gilgamesh Gallery, the first modern art gallery in Iran where aspiring young artists were introduced. In 1963 he returned to the US and taught at Monticello College in Illinois where he became the chairman of the art department.

Alkhas has also created book illustrations, written poems and translated many poems to and from Assyrian. His works have been displayed in numerous exhibitions in Iran, Europe, Canada, Australia and the US. He died on September 14, 2010 of cancer at the age of 80 in the US.